


Everything Is Closing In (The Light Is Slowly Growing Dim)

by MYuzuki



Series: A Motley Little Crew of Dysfunction [9]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: (kind of), Adopted Sibling Relationship, Batfam Week 2018, Buried Alive, Dead Robins Club, Family Bonding, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Near Death Experiences, Sibling Bonding, Trapped, basically Jay and Steph get trapped together and bond, bfw 2018, not sure why this says it was published two weeks ago instead of yesterday but oh well XD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-10 09:46:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15288855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MYuzuki/pseuds/MYuzuki
Summary: An easy patrol night goes sideways when the GCPD receives some anonymous tips about Killer Croc kidnapping people off the streets and dragging them down into the sewers. But with everyone else busy handling a minor breakout from Blackgate, only Spoiler and the Red Hood are available to do the job.But there's more to this situation than meets the eye, and if Jason and Steph aren't careful they may end up trapped underneath Gotham with no way out.





	Everything Is Closing In (The Light Is Slowly Growing Dim)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Batfam Week 2018, Day 2: Trapped.

With only four attempted muggings and one failed robbery by midnight thanks to the pounding rains and shrieking winds of a sudden thunderstorm, it seems like it's going to be an easy patrol night. Hell, Jason might even be able to turn in early if this trend of criminal inaction keeps up; his siblings are all out on patrol tonight, too, after all (as is the big bad Batman himself) so one less fighter on such a slow night won't make a difference.

Of course, just as soon as he opens up a communications line to tell Oracle that he's taking the rest of the night off, everything goes to hell.

"Sorry, Hood," she tells him, "but that's not really an option right now. I just received reports about a breakout in progress at Blackgate Penitentiary."

"Shit." So much for an easy night. He should've known better. "Alright, I'm on my way."

"Negative," she says, cutting him off. "Batman, Robin, Black Bat, Nightwing, and Red Robin are already en route. I need you to handle something else; something more urgent."

"More urgent than a breakout at Blackgate?" Jason asks skeptically.

"Yes," Barbara responds, tone dead serious. "GCPD has received some anonymous calls tonight about Killer Croc. Apparently he's kidnapped a couple of people and dragged them down into the sewers. With his mental state so deteriorated, I'm concerned that he may start devouring them sooner rather than later."

"That's probably a safe assessment," Jason agrees, because Waylon Jennings definitely hasn't been the same since being injected with some sort of virus that aggravated his natural condition and made him mutate further. He indisputably still has some periods where he's mentally more human than beast (he still teams up with other villains on occasion, after all, and even still sponsors Roy in his addiction recovery program), but if he's gone back to snatching innocent people off the streets then clearly this isn't one of those lucid periods.

"Which is why I'm going to have you rendezvous with Spoiler and head down into the sewer system to rescue those abductees," Oracle tells him. "But  _don't_  engage with Croc if you can avoid it," she adds on warningly. "No one's seen him in months, so there's no way of knowing how strong he is right now. Just get in, get the hostages, and get out. And don't get eaten."

"Copy that," Jason replies. "I'm on my way to the Bowery; there's an old maintenance tunnel on Augusta Drive that I can use to access the sewer system."

"Sounds good," Oracle says. "Spoiler was in Coventry last I heard from her, but she was planning to gain entry into the sewers using an outfall along the northern side of Sprang River. You should be able to meet up with her around Junction 35, and then the two of you can work on tracking down Killer Croc's victims."

"Junction 35," Jason repeats. "Got it."

"Alright. I need to get back in touch with the others to coordinate the effort at Blackgate, but don't hesitate to contact me if you run into any serious trouble."

"Sure thing," Jason promises, and then focuses his attention on grappling his way through the dilapidated alleys to reach the sewer access tunnel in the Bowery. Getting there's a little harder than usual because of the pouring rain and the way it makes everything slick and hard to grip, but he manages to make good time and pretty soon he's clambering down into the sewers themselves.

As Oracle had predicted, he runs into Spoiler in the general vicinity of Junction 35.

"Hey there, Blondie," he says. "You up for a Croc hunt?"

"Wouldn't be here if I wasn't," Spoiler replies cheerfully. "Oracle sent me the GCPD reports about where Croc was sighted last before he vanished, so we can start our search in that area of the sewer system."

"Atta girl." He pats her lightly on the shoulder. "Let's get started, then. Between the two of us we should be able to wrap this up in no time at all."

"Definitely," Stephanie agrees. "Killer Croc won't know what hit him!"

Two hours and ten miles of overflowing sewer tunnels later, however, Jason starts to wonder if maybe they'd been overly optimistic.

"There's been no sign of anything down here at all," he grumbles as they search yet another pump room and turn up absolutely nothing other than some old equipment and rusty steel crates full of God only knows what. "Are you sure those reports said that it was this section of the sewers?"

"I'm positive!" Spoiler crosses her arms and glares at him. "The reports that Oracle forwarded to me might have been anonymous, but they were  _very_  specific about where Killer Croc seemed to headed."

"Well, either he managed to haul ass out of the area without leaving _any kind of trail whatsoever_ , or something about those reports is bullshit," Jason remarks, trying to ignore the headache that's starting to creep up the back of his skull.

(Something about this just doesn't feel right.)

"But why would someone falsify multiple missing persons reports like that? And why specify Killer Croc as the perpetrator?" Spoiler shakes her head. "Ugh, this is so stupid. We can't even confirm that anyone's actually been taken, either, because the GCPD is in crisis mode thanks to the Blackgate breakout."

 _Convenient_ , Jason thinks, a trickle of foreboding tingling down his spine.  _Reports specific enough to draw someone down into the sewers, but vague enough so that nothing can be confirmed, at least not when everyone else is preoccupied._

 _But why draw us down here, away from the city?_  he wonders.  _It can't be to assist the Blackgate breakout; there are still five other vigilantes on that. No, it's like someone lured us down here for some specific reason….but what could it be?_

Barely a second after that question crosses his mind, one of the metal crates in the corner explodes, shattering one of the pump room's foundational pillars. Jason barely has time to tackle Stephanie into a small alcove in the corner of the room before the roof collapses down on top of them.

The last things he hears before everything goes dark are the rumble of falling stone and Spoiler shouting his name.

* * *

When Jason finally comes to, the first thing he notices is that someone's taken off his helmet. He panics briefly, bolting upright, but suddenly a familiar face enters into his field of vision, back-lit by an emergency glow stick that's on the ground nearby.

"Whoa, hey, take it easy," Stephanie says, her purple hood pulled down and her blond hair matted with brick dust. "You got knocked out when the roof caved in and I'm worried you might have a concussion, so take it slow, okay?"

It takes Jason a moment to understand what she's talking about, and then it all comes back to him in a rush. Realizing that the Killer Croc abductions had been a ruse, the calls to the GCPD fake. And then, right as he'd realized it, _boom_.

"Who the fuck planted that bomb?" he wonders aloud, groaning as he presses a hand to his head and hits a sore spot. "Shit, what hit me?"

"A chunk of the ceiling," Steph informs him, and her tone is dry but he can hear a tinge of worry underneath. "Anyway, I've been trying to contact Oracle and let her know what happened, but all I'm getting is static; I think my transmitter was damaged during the collapse." She holds up her battered earpiece with a grimace and Jason nods in agreement because, yeah, that thing is fried.

"Let me mess around with my helmet," he tells her, reaching for it and very decidedly trying to not to think about how the two of them are stuck in a small underground space that's no bigger than a linen closet. "If I boost the built-in communication signal, we might be able to reach her."

"Okay," Steph says agreeably, then frowns at him. "You feeling alright?" she asks anxiously. "You're looking a little…pale. In a non-concussion related way," she adds.

Jason swallows hard as a handful of stone dust and soil rains down from above onto their heads. "I'm buried alive underneath the streets of Gotham, Blondie," he says gruffly. "Granted, this is more spacious than my coffin and the company's much better, but still. You do the math."

 _I am not fucking alright_ , is what he doesn't say, but he knows she can hear it in his voice.

"...Oh," Steph says now, and her voice is small, much quieter than he's used to.

"...Don't make that face," he tells her, ignoring her wide eyes in favor of opening the back of his helmet to get at the circuitry hidden there. "I'll be fine. I'm just not a fan of small inescapable underground spaces, that's all."

"Why agree to come down into the sewers at all, then?" Steph asks, seeming torn between curiosity and sympathy.

Jason gives a jerky shrug. "Because Oracle asked me to. Because you needed someone to back you up. Because that's the job, and someone's gotta go it." He examines the comms system inside his helmet for a moment before carefully starting to strip three of the closest wires. "Honestly, even knowing that this whole thing was a trap, I still would've made the same decision."

Now Stephanie's really staring at him like he's lost it. "What? Why in the hell would you come, knowing it's a trap?"

"Because otherwise you would be stuck down here alone," he says simply, and then curses under his breath as one of the wires he's working on sparks and shocks his hand. "Son of a bitch," he grumbles, then carefully re-positions his grip and twists the group of wires together. "Okay, that oughta do it. Let me reactivate this thing and I'll see if we can call Oracle." He powers up the helmet and hits a switch that more or less functions as a speakerphone activation. "Call Oracle," he orders, and he and Spoiler wait as his helmet struggles to compute the command and locate a viable signal.

About ten minutes goes by without anything, and Jason starts to doubt that they'll be able to contact the outside world at all. But finally, a communications line opens up.

"Jason? Jas-" A loud crackle of static. "-you there?"

Jason doesn't bother hiding his massive sigh of relief. "Babs, I'm here. Spoiler, too. Can you hear me?"

"Barely," is Oracle's answer. "What the hell happened?"

"The call into the sewers was a trap," Steph tells her, mouth drawn down into a fierce scowl. "Whoever placed those calls with the GCPD was trying to lure us down here."

"What?!" Even through the hiss and crackle of their unstable communications line, Barbara sounds outraged. "Unbelievable. I'll get to work on those call records right away, to see if I can figure out who's behind it. In the meantime, where are the two of you? Are you hurt?"

"We are currently buried in a bunch rubble somewhere south of Junction 22," Jason replies, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath to calm himself down.  _It's nothing like the coffin_ , he tells himself, even as his mind conjures up hazy memories of splintered wood and damp earth. _This is totally different, calm the fuck down._  "If you could rustle up someone to come get us the fuck out of here, it would be very much appreciated."

Oracle makes a startled sound like someone's kicked her in the chest. "What do you mean, you're buried?"

Steph rubs some grit out of her eyes before responding. "The trap we mentioned earlier? It involved a bomb. The explosion wrecked the integrity of the pump room we were searching, and the whole thing caved in on us. Jason got us to cover in time so we weren't crushed, but we're still trapped under a lot of debris."

Barbara startles them both by letting out an emphatic "Dammit!" before going on to say, "Alright, copy that. I'm contacting the others now; they finished securing the last of the Blackgate escapee's about ten minutes ago, so they'll be coming right over to get you guys out. If your estimation of your location is accurate, they should be able to have you out in nine, maybe ten hours at the most. Just…hang tight, okay?"

"Sure thing," Spoiler chirps, even as she gives Jason a worried look. "We'll just chill out down here, no big deal."

"No big deal," Jason echoes, even as he struggles against the anxiety churning in his gut. He knows  _logically_  that he's not buried back in his coffin again, but the smell of dirt and dampness is not doing much for his state of mind, especially since the lighting is so dim. .

"...Okay," Oracle replies, sounding vaguely uncertain. "Contact me if your situation changes at all."

"Same to you," Jason tells her. "And let us know what that phone search turns up," he tacks on, because he would  _really_  love to know who arranged this trap.

"It's a deal," Barbara promises, and then the line goes silent.

Silence reigns in the small space for all of two minutes and forty-three seconds before Steph cracks. "So," she says, "looks like we're going to be stuck together for a little while."

"I think ten hours minimum qualifies as more than 'a little while'," Jason remarks dryly. "But yeah."

Steph seems to mull something over for a moment, then huffs out a short breath. "Okay, well, my point is…we've never had as much time to get to know each other as the others. So…this is as good a chance as any, I suppose."

"A good chance to do what, Steph?" Jason asks incredulously. "Play twenty questions?"

She just shrugs again, crossing her legs underneath her and leaning back against the rubble behind her. "Might as well. Ten hours of time to kill, remember?"

"Ugh, don't remind me," Jason mutters, shuddering in distaste. "Ten hours, buried underground. Fuck my life."

"...so that digging your way out of your own coffin thing  _is_  true," Steph says suddenly, her voice hesitant again. "I overheard some of the others say something about it before, about how your coffin looked like it had been destroyed from the inside out, but…."

"But you thought it couldn't possibly be true, right?" Jason gives a bitter laugh. "Well, sorry to freak you out, Blondie, but it's the truth. I still don't know how I got resurrected the first time, before the Pit brought me back all the way, but I remember enough of that time to know that I woke up six feet down in the cold ground and had to bust loose from my own damn coffin. Then I had to dig up to the surface. It was very much not a happy awakening, to say the very least."

"...I'm sorry," Steph says, eyes shining wetly as she crawls across the space to wrap her arms around him in a tight hug. "God, Jason, I am so sorry."

"Don't be," he mumbles, returning the hug automatically before pulling away. "Had nothing to do with you. You weren't even part of the vigilante scene yet."

"Still…" Stephanie seems to struggle for words before finally settling on, "The whole things sucks."

Jason is startled enough to laugh, and it feels surprisingly good, to laugh about it even if it's just for a moment. "Yeah, it does," he agrees, still chuckling. "It really sucks." Then he looked at her seriously. "But I'm not the only Robin who's been killed in the line of duty," he remarks pointedly. "Dickiebird told me that you got on the wrong side of Black Mask a few years ago, back when you were still Robin."

"You mean before I got tortured, faked my death, and temporarily moved to Africa?" Steph replies, and her words are quick and light but he can hear the tremor of old fear and pain in her voice. "Yeah, that sucked, too. But you…you….the  _Joker_ , Jason, I can't even imagine. Compared to that…"

"It's not a competition," he says, rolling his eyes as he tries to lighten the mood a bit. "Besides, being tortured by Black Mask is hardly something to sneeze at. Also," he adds, "from what Leslie told me, you didn't so much  _fake_  your death as get resuscitated later and decide to take advantage of the situation. According to the good ol' Doc, you flat-lined for almost two full minutes when you were in surgery. Which means you did  _technically_  die. Congratulations."

"Thanks," she says dryly. "We should start a club. I'll have some custom t-shirts made. Team Dead Robins. Or maybe Dead Robins Club. What do you think?"

Jason snickered. "Can you imagine the look on Bruce's face?"

Stephanie snorts. "I can't imagine he'd be too thrilled about it," she agrees.

"Nah, he wouldn't get it," Jason says with a careless shrug. "He doesn't…deal with things in the same way that we do. I don't think he understands how someone can take a trauma and laugh about it as a way to move on."

"Because he's Batman?"

"Because he's Bruce Wayne," Jason corrects, "and we're kids from the bad side of town. We just react differently to things, I think, because of how we grew up."

"You mean because he's a rich boy orphan and we're the offspring of criminals?" Steph summarized lightly.

"Something like that," Jason agrees, smirking. "You know as well as I do that sometimes finding the humor in something, even if it is twisted and grim, is the only way to keep going. B doesn't get that; I think it's probably why he gets that sour look on his face every time I crack a bad joke about my death."

"Mm," is the only response Steph gives, but he can see her nodding in the gloom.

"So," Jason says now, "you got the first question, so now it's my turn."

"Oh, jeez," Stephanie says, sounding so resigned that Jason can't help but laugh. "Alright, I guess that's only fair, especially since my question lead us straight into a depressing conversation about dying. Go ahead; ask away."

Jason regards her seriously for several long moments, considering his options carefully. He could ask a serious question that might make them even more glum, or he could opt for something to cheer her up instead.

Finally, he asks, "So, tell me honestly:  _what_  did you seem in Tim to make you start dating him? I mean, I get that you guys were in high school at the time and hormones can cook a person's brain cells something awful at that age,  _but still_."

He's rewarded when Stephanie gives a loud snort that quickly turns into genuine peals of laughter, her shoulders shaking with the force of it.

They spend the next nine and a half hours trading embarrassing stories about the other members of their makeshift crime-fighting family, until Batman and the others finally reach them (with the help of some handy excavation equipment that Jason suspects was appropriated from a construction site somewhere).

"What's so funny?" Tim asks when Jason looks over him and immediately starts snickering.

"Oh, nothing at all," Jason says innocently, exchanging a look with Steph, who's pulling up her hood and ducking her head to hide her smile. "Just glad to see my beloved siblings, that's all. And you," he adds, nodding to Batman.

"Are either of you hurt?" Batman asks, his voice gruff as he comes over to start checking them for injuries.

"Nothing some rest and painkillers won't fix," Jason replies, right as Steph responds, "Jason may have a concussion."

He makes a face at her. "Traitor," he complains. "And here I thought we'd bonded like real siblings and everything."

"Oh, don't be like that," she says, waving a hand at him dismissively. "We both know you need to get yourself checked out properly before going home. After all, I can't have you dropping dead; you still need to help me track down whoever trapped us down there and kick their ass."

Jason laughed despite himself. "Fair point," he conceded, and reluctantly allowed Bruce to bundle him into the Batmobile and take him back to the Manor to be fussed at by Alfred even as Tim and Cass continued to double-check and triple-check the fact that Steph was largely unharmed aside from some bruises .

All in all, being trapped in the sewers hadn't been as terrible as he'd expected, thanks to Steph's presence. For not the first time, he found himself both perplexed and grateful that he had mended things enough with his family members for this sort of happy ending to a disaster to even be possible.

One thing was guaranteed, though: whoever had set up that trap would regret it. Jason would make sure of it, because not only had they trapped him down there, they'd trapped Steph, too. And Jason's not going to let a murder attempt on a member of his family slide.

For now, though, he's content to doze off on one of Bruce's many couches while Alfred passive-aggressively chides him about being more careful in the future.

There's no place like home, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that was my second contribution to Batfam Week 2018! I hope you all enjoyed it! Also, don't worry: I will absolutely do a follow-up story about which villain was behind the trap! It's just going to have to wait until after Batfam Week 2018 is over, lol. XD


End file.
